Obituary

Alan Gorst

My father, Alan Gorst, who has died aged 77, was one of the early cohorts through the first social work degree in the UK, graduating from Oxford University to work with children in care in the US and Canada in the 1950s. A teacher of social work at Canadian and British universities, he started to contribute regularly to Community Care magazine in the 70s, and put his ideas into practice as a social services manager in Newcastle upon Tyne.

As director of social services in the London Borough of Barnet, he found ways to promote progressive community care in an 1980s Britain that was cutting spending in the sector. He worked as a county councillor, stood as a Labour MP in North Hertfordshire, and was the first chief executive to resign in protest at the 1986 Widdicombe rules forbidding the participation of civil servants in politics.

After a period as head of the Alone in London service for homeless people, Alan headed a British charity's Eastern European project to start up new-style orphanages, remedying the abuses that had come to light when Nicolae Ceausescu's regime fell in Romania.

Settling in Brasov, Transylvania, in the mid-90s, he started the first amateur theatre company in the country, directing and acting in musicals performed in Romanian and English. Committed to the spirit of community care even after retirement, he adopted the fatherless children of his Romanian partner and supported them for 15 years, before moving back to the UK as his health deteriorated.

Alan was a keen writer, leaving a collection of poems and two novels published in Romania, and never stopped writing letters of protest to the British media, many of which were published. He is survived by my sister, Tamara, and myself.